Disasters

"California is at the edge of another protracted drought, just a few years after one of the worst dry spells in state history left poor and rural communities without well water, triggered major water restrictions in cities, forced farmers to idle their fields, killed millions of trees, and fueled devastating megafires."

"The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on Thursday unveiled changes to the National Flood Insurance Program that it says will be aimed at being more equitable."

"California’s hopes for a wet “March miracle” did not materialize and a dousing of April showers may as well be a mirage at this point. The state appears in the midst of another drought only a few years after a punishing 5-year dry spell dried up rural wells, killed endangered salmon, idled farm fields and helped fuel the most deadly and destructive wildfires in modern state history."

"President Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan represents an enormous effort to protect Americans from climate change, but it sidesteps one of the most immediate and wrenching dilemmas: Deciding not just where to spend more money on roads, bridges or sea walls, but where to stop spending — and instead, help people get out of the way."

"Many of us will have felt the grip of claustrophobic isolation over the past year, but the lawyer Steven Donziger has experienced an extreme, very personal confinement as a pandemic arrived and then raged around him in New York City."

"A mine tailings dam planned for a seismically unstable area of Sumatra’s rainforest would be at high risk of failure, experts warn. The dam’s collapse would be a disaster, they say, releasing a wall of slurry that would engulf and bury Indigenous villages and their inhabitants."

"Wildfire experts in Northern New Mexico are urging the community to prepare for a hot, dry summer with potentially worse conditions than previous years, and they say the idea of a wildfire “season” is slowly dissipating as climate change makes the state’s forests more susceptible to blazes year-round."